Dave Munger
dmunger
Posts by this author
April 11, 2007
This story in the Washington Post has been getting a lot of attention. The reporter convinced world-famous violin virtuoso Joshua Bell to play for 45 minutes in a busy Washington subway station, as an experiment to see if passersby would recognize his amazing talents and reward him appropriately.…
April 10, 2007
Jim just started playing this year for his school's junior varsity lacrosse team. As a beginner, he doesn't see a lot of action, but it's nonetheless exciting to watch the games -- they are fast-paced, with plenty of scoring and a few hard hits. Most junior varsity teams don't have the equipment…
April 10, 2007
These days, it seems like everyone's got a science book. Not a small number of them end up on my desk -- apparently Cognitive Daily is "important" enough that publicists feel a review from us is worth the cost of printing and mailing me a book. But just because they send me the book doesn't mean I…
April 9, 2007
The debate about Chris Mooney and Matthew Nisbet's recent Science article has gotten quite contentious. Nisbet and Mooney contend that if scientists hope to persuade the public to value science, they must take heed of recent research on "framing." In other words, they claim, scientists are failing…
April 6, 2007
This week's Casual Fridays study plays off a post written by Mike Dunford. The question is, how are political attitudes affected by legal knowledge? Do you let the law get in the way of a political position, or do political goals trump legal ones? In fact, you might what to read Mike's post before…
April 5, 2007
Even though most of us aren't concerned with physical survival on a day-to-day basis, the concept of "survival" remains a potent one -- just think of the persistent success of TV shows like Survivor and Lost. Perhaps this popularity has to do with more than just good advertising and an interesting…
April 5, 2007
In a recent opinion piece appearing in the Washington Post, Jason Johnson argues that in today's cut-and-paste world, the term paper is becoming irrelevant:
Today I plagiarized multiple documents at work. I took the writing of others and presented it to my supervisor as if it were my own. It was an…
April 4, 2007
Cognitive Daily has been chosen to respond to the first question in a newly revised feature on ScienceBlogs: Ask a ScienceBlogger. Readers can submit questions, and they'll be answered by an expert in the field of inquiry (even though it's posted under Dave's name, Dave and Greta worked together on…
April 4, 2007
I told you so.
Now it's been confirmed: Daylight saving time doesn't save energy.
In other news:
Here's an intervention that really works.
Referees affected by crowd noise. But we already knew that, too.
Nice discussion of Gapminder. Try it out for yourself. It's addictive!
Computers beginning to…
April 3, 2007
If you're like me, when you read a book, you form a picture of what's happening in your mind. I try to imagine not only what the characters look like, but also their surroundings. Eventually, I've created a picture of an entire world in my head. Then, when the book gets made into a film, I'm often…
April 3, 2007
Just wanted to point out an excellent interview with Philip Zimbardo, the principal researcher of the controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, on the New York Times web site.
If, like me, you couldn't stomach watching the entire video (now removed from YouTube), you should at least watch this 8-…
April 3, 2007
Amardeep Singh suggests that bloggers might benefit from some form of peer review:
The idea came to me as I've begun preparing a tenure file at my current university, acutely aware that my blog writing cannot be considered "peer-reviewed" publication by any current standard. Even the rewards of…
April 2, 2007
Just a quick announcement: I've changed my email address, so if you need to get in touch with me, please update your address books. The new address is dsmunger--at--gmail--dot--com.
March 30, 2007
This week's Casual Friday study attempted to get to the bottom of the age-old thermostat battle. In every office, classroom, and home, it seems, no one can agree on the proper temperature to set the thermostat. While one person is shivering like a wet poodle, their office-mate is sweating like…
March 29, 2007
Earlier today I posted a poll challenging Cognitive Daily readers to show me that they understand error bars -- those little I-shaped indicators of statistical power you sometimes see on graphs. I was quite confident that they wouldn't succeed. Why was I so sure? Because in 2005, a team led by…
March 29, 2007
Cognitive Daily gets a lot of complaints about graphs, mostly from readers who say the graphs are useless without error bars. My response is that error bars are confusing to most readers. But perhaps I'm wrong about that. Now I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.
Take a look at this graph.…
March 29, 2007
Computers have become such an integral part of life that it's often tempting to believe that they work just like the human brain (or that the brain works just like a computer). However, those of us who've spent time programming computers know that we don't "think" like computers: if we did, a…
March 28, 2007
John Tierney wonders whether doctors should be prosecuted for prescribing too much pain medication. Tierney makes some good points. One "warning sign" that a patient may be abusing drugs is that they come back for a refill early because their medicine has run out. Couldn't this also be a sign that…
March 27, 2007
When we see a familiar face, or even a photo of a favorite car or pet, we're often flooded with memories from our past. Sometimes just seeing a person or object that's similar to the ones in our memory will trigger recollections we never knew we had. Maybe you've had a memory triggered by a scent…
March 27, 2007
This week's edition of Encephalon and an email from the Neurophilosopher has reminded me that I've been rather negligent of my blogroll lately.
I believe a blogroll should represent the sites a blogger visits frequently; it's an invitation into that blogger's community. Surely you'd get a sense of…
March 26, 2007
A rat's brain has millions of neurons, each with up to 10,000 connections to other neurons. This "simple" animal's neural network is mind-bogglingly complex. Yet a Swiss laboratory has achieved remarkable success duplicating a vast region of a rat's brain using a supercomputer. They still have a…
March 23, 2007
Last weekend Greta and I had a joint party celebrating our fortieth birthdays (my birthday was in January, Greta's is in May, so we split the difference). Naturally, the conversation turned to the changes that occur as we get older. I said that I thought I felt cold more often than when I was…
March 23, 2007
Greta has a jar of candy in her office, and she eats exactly one piece of candy per day (as well as offering it to her students whenever they visit). By contrast, if I have candy within 50 yards of my office, it will disappear within a day or two at the most (which is why I don't keep candy in my…
March 22, 2007
The Kuleshov Effect, discovered nearly a century ago by Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov, posits that the context in which we see an image of an actor's face will determine the emotion the face portrays. For example, take a look at this short little clip I made (QuickTime required). First you'll see a…
March 22, 2007
The New York Times has a great article on the Japanese gaming company responsible for the Sudoku craze. The article is interesting, but be sure to check out the sidebar, where you can try three up-and-coming rivals to Sudoku.
Personally I find Sudoku a little boring: After I figured out a "system"…
March 21, 2007
PsyBlog has completed its list of the top 10 psychology studies. You can now vote for your favorite.
What are the odds of a three-way tie in Jeopardy!?
What's special about beef, cream, and orange?
Chris disses the simulation theory of aesthetics, or why watching Rambo doesn't feel like getting…
March 21, 2007
Several news outlets are reporting on a study, in some cases claiming that racing video games "cause" accidents or reckless driving. But causality is difficult to demonstrate in psychology research. Do the games really cause accidents?
Many of the irate commenters on the news articles claim that…
March 20, 2007
On the opening episode of the Colbert Report, faux conservative Stephen Colbert expressed his preference for "guts" over facts:
That's where truth comes from -- the gut. Facts come from the brain -- and some people think that makes facts better. But did you know you have more nerve endings in your…
March 20, 2007
Eric Schwitzgebel offers an interesting paradox:
When I was a graduate student, a girlfriend asked me what, of all things, I most enjoyed doing. Eschewing the obvious and half-clever reply, I answered skiing -- thinking of those moments of breathing the cold, clean air, taking in the mountain view…
March 19, 2007
It seems that students (and their parents) are more stressed than ever about whether they'll get into the right college. Admission to places like Harvard, Stanford, and Duke is getting more competitive each year, with less than ten percent of applicants actually admitted. Because attending the best…